Page 26 of The Cruel Heir
Back at Clear View Prep, I’d once followed her after orchestra practice. She walked with her violin strapped to her back, coat half-zipped, lips moving to a melody I couldn’t hear.
A group of girls cornered her near the locker room. Called her slurs. Laughed about her ‘hair grease’ and ‘welfare curls’.
She didn’t flinch.
She looked them in the eye, and walked straight through.
And then there she was, before I walked out; spine stiff, wrists bleeding under my grip, body trembling. I replayed her responses time and again in my mind.
Still fighting.
Still mine.
Even in that moment, covered in sweat and my seed, she was fucking radiant.
I didn’t want to just own her. I wanted to collapse into her. To carve out space inside her, until there was nothing left but me.
I would fill her with my name until she forgot her own. Until she wanted what I did. Until there was no fight in her left to give.
STERLING
Istrode into the Kingsley Consortium boardroom, my expression schooled into that bland, businesslike calm that made old money men nervous. I knew the game. I was born in it, bred for it, sharpened by it. But that didn’t mean I had patience for being summoned, like a subordinate.
The room was a museum of power, with walnut paneling, old oil portraits of dead Kingsleys with colder eyes than mine, and a table long enough to host the Last Supper. They sat around it in designer suits, like vultures in Armani. Men who’d earned their fortunes off the backs of women they wouldn’t dare acknowledge in public. Men who sipped legacy like bourbon, neat and unquestioned.
The chairs were arranged with militant precision, but the atmosphere carried the slight charge of discomfort. The tension of men who built their kingdoms on silence, now forced to confront the son who refused to be quiet.
"Sterling," Harrington began, already clearing his throat like a guilty priest. "We felt it necessary to convene, because of recent concerns regarding your expansion strategies. Some of us believe-"
I cut him off, with a smile that didn’t reach my eyes. "Some of you believe what, exactly? That growth should wait until your golf season ends?"
Whitmore, the ever-measured relic of my father’s era, interjected smoothly. "We understand your ambition. But with the current media attention-"
"Ah, the media," I murmured. "You mean the gossip blogs your wives read, before their plastic surgeons open shop?"
No one laughed. They weren’t supposed to. This was theater, and I was both lead and executioner.
"Gentlemen," I said, letting my tone drop like a guillotine. "Let’s be clear. My father is gone. The last champagne toast at his memorial is flat. My mother’s shares? Signed over. To me. I own the majority. You don’t get to pretend this is still your sandbox."
A pause. Then stillness. The kind of silence that money couldn’t interrupt.
"And while we’re airing grievances," I continued, "let’s not pretend this sudden concern is about fiscal conservatism. You’re worried because I don’t have a family. Because the image of a single, black billionaire threatens your investor branches."
That struck a nerve. Whitmore flinched. Harrington’s jaw ticked.
"Let’s call it what it is: bigotry, legacy anxiety, and fear that I might choose a woman you wouldn’t bring home to Palm Beach."
Harrington bristled. "Sterling, with all due respect, tradition matters. Stability matters."
"You mean optics," I said flatly. "You mean a wife with the right lineage, a womb with the right pedigree. You mean a black man, in a white empire, who doesn’t rock the boat."
The tension climbed. Good.
"I understand the game," I continued. "You want an heir. A ring. A reason to believe I’ll play house like my father did."
"And if that woman came from a known family," Whitmore added carefully, "it would help settle the nerves of the more conservative investors."
"You want a ring in the quarterly reports," I said, eyes narrowing. "Marriage as a tax strategy. An heir as insurance."
